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Book Description
Release date: October 29, 2013 | ISBN-10: 1419704702 | ISBN-13: 978-1419704703 | Edition: 1
After George Lucas finished work on Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, he wanted to look back on the Star Wars saga with an entirely new point of view: isolating stills, or frames, from each of the six Star Wars films, focusing on them intensely as works of photography and design, and reproducing them in a book. For two years Lucas went through more than 150,000 frames per film, editing more than 1 million frames down to the 1,416 images that now comprise Star Wars: Frames, a testament to the hard work, craftsmanship, and dedication evident in every frame of every film. Star Wars: Frames brings together Lucas’s personal shot-by-shot selections into a lavishly designed two-volume hardcover set—one volume for the Original Trilogy and one volume for the Prequel Trilogy. For collectors and fans, Star Wars: Frames is the ultimate look on this grand project devoted to a cinematic phenomenon—and the ultimate Star Wars collector’s tome.

Editorial Reviews
Review
“Cinematography is not about technology. It’s about art, it’s about taste. In the end it’s about understanding your craft.”- GEORGE LUCAS””FRAMES” is about allowing the reader the time and the space to examine fully that (“cinematography”) craft.”- J.W. RINZLER, Executive Editor, LucasFilmAuthor of “The Making of Star Wars”

Who would have thought that I would be on Google’s side on anything, much less feeling sorry for them.

But true to the axiom the enemy of my enemy is my friend, that’s exactly where I am at with Google, at this point in time.

The Android platform came onto 2011 like a breath of fresh air, and its meteoric rise gave the mobile market something it hasn’t had in many a year… choice, and true competition, relief from the Apple Juggernaut.

But that choice came at a price… Namely a feeding frenzy of the most powerful companies in the world all deciding to destroy the Android Platform, Google, itself no lightweight, finds itself having to deal with no less than 6 Mega-Massive Lawsuits, from companies with revenues in excess of billions of dollars each.

The companies lined up to protect their entrenched, monopolistic and consumer enslaving business models and technologies are Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, Ebay, GeMalto and as of today British Telecom. And that’s just counting the ones suing that are valued over a billion dollars.

You add them all together and you have as stated… a bloody feeding frenzy.

With companies using flawed to the point of destructive Software Patents, to stifle innovation and destroy competition.

These Goliath’s don’t want to win customers through creating better products, heaven forbid, they want to sue, and legislate and license and otherwise utilize “Al Capone style” Protection racket schemes, to sell the American people and the world… only their product. Typically overpriced, often severely crippled products. Take the Ipad that is lacking basic design features such as USB and HDMI and SD ports, and it’s only the competition of Android (which does offer these ports) that is making Apple have to address these glaring omissions on their tablet in each successive new model.

So again I’ve had, and had my share of problems with Google, their search engine and email and pretty staggering abuses of privacy and personal freedoms, from digitizing and uploading massive amounts of books, to the detriment of authors and publishers, to extreme methods of uncovering and mapping public and private networks/wi-fi hotspots, to generally being one of the privacy problems on the Internet rather than one of the solutions.

So imagine my surprise that it is Google, for self serving needs to be sure, that through the android platform, offers us, the consumer, the best chance at real choice and real innovation to hit the technology scene in decades. Android isn’t perfect, it’s in its infancy, and as Carrier IQ and malwaqre scare show, it has growing yet to do. I’d like it to get the chance to grow.

And further, Google’s Android platform, in an economic environment that has been going from depression to depression, has actually been allowing businesses to flourish in a way we have never seen in the mobile market. That competition thing again, that is the first excitement, and first upswing in terms of substantial new products, and new players we’ve seen in the market, the first good sign in the economy.

And the Goliaths rather than wanting to compete, and win or lose based on product merit in a flourishing everybody makes money environment, seek instead to sue the Android Platform into a coma, and all the watershed business, and economies of scale, and diversity, and yes choice… that has built up around it… sue them out of business. And continue an economic outlook and policy, that further disenfranchises the bulk of people and companies, in favor of a very few companies and a very few people. Moving ever quicker to an unsupportable age of masters and slaves. And I tell you now, in that age… when the poor man has nothing left to lose… the fall for the rich…. shall be steep.

Apple particularly has been blatant and disgusting in their global attempt to monopolize the mobile market. To allow this monopolization and indeed chilling of innovation and competition is to sign the death warrant of liberties both subtle and gross in America and in the world. It is to Grandfather these six companies in… not as providers of services and technologies to customers, but as imposed entities, protection rackets, selling their products to the American people and the world at the barrel of a lawsuit.

It cannot stand.

And not only is Google the sole large capital company to defend open source, but they are also one of the few big cap companies to battle the media provider rape of the American people that is this horrendous SOPA Bill now, brokered by the same companies suing Google, winding it’s way into law in our congress. Which once done will make freedom of speech on the Internet, like competition, an endangered species.

Find out where your representative stands on this ‘Patriot Act level of wrong’ bill.

Tell them today to oppose the SOPA bill.

So as odd as this is for me to say, I’m rooting for Google, not just to win all six court cases and get to maintain a non-crippled Android, but further to deal a death blow to this horrible ‘its time is passed’ concept of Software Patents.

The logo belongs to the brilliant website shadowsanctum.net, and I urge you to check her site out here. It’s great!

“Dead Cobras are better playthings than live ones.”
—The Shadow in THE TEMPLE BELLS OF NEBAN

“My reward, like yours Commissioner, is in protecting the defenseless from those who have not learned… that crime does not pay.”
—The Shadow

The TEMPLE BELLS OF NEBAN is a very intriguing Shadow episode from 1937, over 70 years ago at the dawn of the age of radio, starring the inimitable Orson Welles. And I highly recommend people seeking it out, and giving it a listen.

It’s not the best sounding recording available, but you can clearly hear why this show was an immediate hit, as the Shadow spars, almost lovingly, with a beautiful Indian dancer, whose powers may rival his own.

And It’s also worth mentioning these shows only exist because of collectors, what today we would call filesharers, or bootleggers, these shows and thousands like them only exist because of the loving collector who recorded them off the air and kept them and shared them for the love, while the very companies that produced them, could not erase the tapes fast enough after the initial airing, seeing no long term value/profit to them.

I’m saying it’s ironic that what companies race today to make illegal, is the very people who have preserved the intellectual property many of them today… build their fortunes off of.

They seek to make illegal… the people who we need. The ones who keep things alive not for the money… but the love.

How lucky we are to have these recordings. Unfortunately thanks to Congress and the Supreme court working in tandem to put the rights of businesses above citizens…not only are clear Public Domain concepts like the Shadow radio show and pulp novels no longer in public domain, but they’ve recently upheld a law that allows the REMOVAL of certain foreign based works (Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“Section 514”), which restores copyright protection to certain foreign works that were previously in the public domain), including compositions and the works of silent film directors such as Fritz Lang, out of Public Domain.

How the hell does Congress perceive they have the right to do that? Or does the Supreme court support them in that?

Fritz Lang is taken out of copyright today, what happens tomorrow… Poe? Shakespeare? All so companies can get you to pay, pay, pay.

And making this a one two punch, the Supreme Court has recently upheld (by failing to overturn the 9th circuit court ruling) Software companies rights to stop you from reselling your software on grounds of— well honestly the grounds make no sense— basically it’s companies intent on destroying the secondary market of used resellers, a huge and vital part of any economy, so they alone determine what in essence can be sold. And more, they alone can profit.

The story reads in part:
“The Supreme Court is refusing to review a federal appellate panel’s decision that software makers may use shrink-wrap and click-wrap licenses to forbid the transfer or resale of their wares.

Without comment, the justices on Monday let stand a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that is another erosion of the so-called “first-sale” doctrine, which the Supreme Court began to chip away at last year.

The first-sale doctrine generally is an affirmative defense to copyright infringement. It usually allows legitimate owners of copyrighted works to resell those copies.

That 3-0 circuit court decision means copyright owners may prohibit the resale of their wares by inserting clauses in their sales agreements. Autodesk had done that with a version of its popular AutoCAD software. The San Rafael, Calif. company sued to enforce those terms in its sales agreement and prevailed.

The Motion Picture Association of America and Software & Information Industry Association, whose members include Google, Adobe, McAfee, Oracle and dozens of others, urged the appellate court to rule as it did.”

–This is from the excellent guys at WIRED (it’s not lost on me that WIRED unfortunately is owned by CondeNast, one of the companies particularly active in chipping away at Public Domain), and the full story, along with other shocking abuses and erosions of liberty can be read here.

This ruling by the 9th circuit court, inherently cripples and destroys a healthy monetary model, in favor of a model geared entirely on creating a monopolistic system, and an entrenched protected powerbase that flies in the face of a free enterprise system.

The idea that I can’t, or you can’t resell something you bought, is itself an overstepping of liberties, and an infringement on liberties, so great as to be in and of itself… criminal.

Where does it end?

You do this first with the used software market, what is next? You can’t sell used DVDs? You can’t sell used books? You can’t sell used cars? You can’t sell used houses? At what point are you bankrupt of owning and controlling anything you purchase? Even the air you breathe, the food you eat, everything eventually gets leased to you?

Absurd right? We’re on an absurd and dangerous path.

This is a law that must be challenged and thrown out. And stands once more as clear and present proof that the congress and the supreme court are in the pocket of big business.

And that we have become a country at the mercy of crooks and liars and cowards and scum and thieves.

We have become a country, at the mercy of our neutered Congress and our spade Supreme Court.

The purpose of government is not to protect business at the expense of the citizens, it is to protect citizens at the expense of business.

It is not the job of government to insure the status or the livelihood of Sony or Microsoft or Disney. Businesses come and businesses go. Most of the business around at the start of the 20th century didn’t make it to the end of the 20th century, and that is how it should be.

And part of it is we have 20th century judges ruling on 21st century cases, and quite frankly they are out of their depth.

These are people who can barely turn on a computer or send an email, and yet they are the defenders of the slippery digital slope, and preserving liberties in this brave new field of law. And the judges often rely on opinions of ‘experts’, which is to say the very people that have a stake in seeing laws go their way.

So increasingly judges are deer in technological headlights, and rule when in doubt with the big named company they think knows what they are talking about.

Example?

Alex Kozinski, one of the highest judges in the land. And the chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, that allowed Software companies to make resale of software illegal… This is how technologically savvy this guy is…

The following is an excerpt from the LA times:

“Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acknowledged in an interview with The Times that he had posted the materials, which included a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. Some of the material was inappropriate, he conceded, although he defended other sexually explicit content as “funny.”

Kozinski, 57, said that he thought the site was for his private storage and that he was not aware the images could be seen by the public, although he also said he had shared some material on the site with friends. After the interview Tuesday evening, he blocked public access to the site.”

—By Scott Glover
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 11, 2008

This is the judge of one of the highest courts of the land? And shaping the laws that bind us all?? He doesn’t even know how the web works and he’s defining the legal length and breadth of it? Not even getting into the moral implications.

It is a sad and dangerous pattern, when our rights are given away at a whim.

Businesses are here to serve the people, and when they fail to do that, or choose not to do that, they deserve to fail. The very opposite of what is happening.

Case in point, Obama’s bailout of Wallstreet? Forget Wallstreet. Bail out the homeowners, and the unemployed and underemployed. Generate new business in the vacuum of businesses that don’t want to pay American taxes, or hire American employees at a live-able wage. These companies, Exxon, Shell, take billions of dollars out of the United States, but have a fit if you talk about raising the minimum wage, or paying workers $20/hr.

But we have a corrupt Congress and a corrupt Judiciary, so we bail out billionaires and aggressively tax, broke and breaking, American citizens to pay for that immoral bailout.

Our Congress and our Judiciary are crooks.

Except… that’s not true.

We have corrupt or incompetent people in Congress and the Courts, but the disease is not the man.

The idea of Congress and the idea of a Supreme Court, are good ideas.

There are people in Congress and the Courts who are there because they believe in this under attack idea of.. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

But they get lost, their good lost in the bad. We owe them more than that.

And how do we do that?

By naming names. Specific people vote these abhorrent laws into being. And they count on being a nameless part of a mob, just as the RIAA and the MPAA are klan hoods for companies doing under the shelter of their hood, things they would shy from by themselves or in the brightness of day.

It’s not enough to say Congress passed this and the Judiciary allowed this. We must name names, of those who in our darkest hour went around putting out lights, as well as those few who stood against them, and tried to light candles.

We must name… the enemies of our state. So we remember them, and push for their ousting for their crimes against us. It’s not enough to just concentrate on who is or isn’t president, we must concentrate just as hard on who we fill Congress with, and the courts.

Today’s INTERESTING soundtracks!

Most disturbing thing I heard today:

“The young Japanese girl can go to the same place she might have gone to to have her eyelids westernised or her breasts enlarged and here she can have herself surgically… reflowered.” Man that just made me queezy and not in a good way. That sentence is wrong on so many levels. That line comes from the soundtrack TEENAGE REBELLION.

Most brilliant thing I heard today:

Quincy Jones’ soundtrack to IN COLD BLOOD is my discovery of the day.

I was never that taken with Truman Capote or the film made from his award winning book… IN COLD BLOOD, but I listened to a track from the soundtrack today and was BLOWN AWAY!

I immediately went looking for it on CD, and you know what… IT IS NOT AVAILABLE!! Has never been issued on CD!!! That is a crime, because as RATSO RUSSO, the mastermind behind the GROOVY SOUNDTRACKS radio show and podcast where I listened to these tracks stated, this is Quincy Jones at his darkest.

And from what I heard, I would argue at his most brilliant. A masterpiece.

It is a crime, A CRIME I SAY that this soundtrack was never made available on CD. If you’re lucky you may come across the original 1968 LP, but cheap it is not. LP ranges from $50 to $250.

But to get a sampling of these tracks (try before you buy) and many more check out Ratso’s great GROOVY MOVIES PODCAST here, and tell Ratso that HT sent ya!

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